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Monday, February 18, 2013

Tombstone Tuesday - Alice and Edward Quirk

I've talked about Edward and Alice Quirk nee Blanchfield before, but I realized that I never posted a picture of their tombstone. I'll have to take another picture when I go back to Pennsylvania this summer. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I can't believe that I cut off part of the stone. There's no information there, but still!

Alice died in 1915. That's 45 years before her husband. I thought that I had blogged Alice's obit previously, but I'm not seeing it on my blog. I'll have to look again when this flu bug gets out of my system and if it turns out I didn't, then I'll have to rectify that. It's a very sad story (as death usually is), but I will only touch on it today and save the details for when I'm more coherent.

Alice died shortly after giving birth to their second child. The child also passed soon after birth. My grandmother, Mary Alice Quirk, was their first-born. Edward never remarried and he and his daughter lived with his brother and sisters. Her aunts and uncle raised her like their own daughter and she had a good childhood.

The year Edward passed away, my grandparents lost their fourth child, a daughter, Ann. She is buried with Alice and Edward. Their tombstone is located in Saint Gabriel's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

I like sharing information about Alice. I don't have a lot of it, but when I first began my genealogy research and I ran across others researching the Blanchfields, there were more often than not family trees that had Alice married to someone besides Edward or not married at all. I felt like I was actually able to help fit some pieces together for some people conducting their research. I know I always appreciate it.

I feel a special connection with Alice. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because I feel for my grandmother having lost her mother when she was tiny and it makes me realize how lucky I am to have my mother even as an adult.